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Politics & Government

Redistricting "Victory" for Western Loudoun Could Prove Hollow

Drawing residents from east of Route 15 into rural districts could leave western Loudoun without local representation.


I have observed the redistricting process in Loudoun County three times – after the 1990, 2000, and 2010 Census counts. Every time, the process has centered around one key question: At the end of the process, how many districts would western Loudoun have?

This has been the elephant in the room every ten years.  Even when it has not been addressed directly, there has been unspoken tension between those members of the Board of Supervisors who want to maximize the representation of rural western Loudoun and those who want more representation in the suburban east.

In each of the three redistricting processes I have seen, advocates for the west have won, garnering the maximum number of western Loudoun districts possible.

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That appears to be the case again this year, as western Loudoun retained two districts (Blue Ridge and Catoctin) in addition to the Leesburg District in central Loudoun. But it is a victory that could backfire somewhere down the road and leave the rural west with virtually no representation on the Board.

For most of its history, the population of Loudoun County remained nearly constant at about 20,000, distributed relatively evenly across the rural county with Leesburg as the main population center.  That began to change in the second half of the 20th Century as the expansion of the Washington metropolitan region moved into eastern Loudoun, leading to the development of Sterling Park and other suburban neighborhoods.

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In the 1980s, there was still a fairly even balance between the east and the west.  There were three western districts – Catoctin, Blue Ridge and Mercer, plus Leesburg in central Loudoun.  There were also three districts located east of Route 28 – Sterling, Broad Run and Guilford.  The other district, Dulles, stretched from the Fairfax County line at Forest Ridge to southwestern Leesburg.

After the 1990 Census, it was not a given that western Loudoun would retain three districts, because the population had grown much more in the east.  But advocates of the west managed to prevail by carving up the population of outer Leesburg, leaving the inner core of the town in the Leesburg District.  The Catoctin District picked up residents from southwestern, northern and northeastern Leesburg, and the Mercer District pulled in residents from southeastern Leesburg.

As a result, western Loudoun was represented by at least three of the eight district Supervisors throughout the ’90s.  A ninth seat was added to the Board in 1992: the chairman, who was directly elected by the voters across the entire county.  The first chairman-at-large, George Barton, lived in Hamilton.  So for those four years, four of the nine Supervisors lived in western Loudoun, in addition to one in Leesburg.

But the population continued to shift to the east during the ’90s, so that by 2000 there was no way the lines could be re-drawn such that western Loudoun would keep three districts. In fact, it was possible that the rural parts of the county might wind up with only one representative on the Board.

But advocates of western Loudoun prevailed again.  The Catoctin District was extended to wrap around the entire Leesburg District, which again consisted of just the inner core of the town.  Although Catoctin was still considered a rural district, many of its residents lived in Leesburg.  The Blue Ridge District covered the rest of western Loudoun.

Eastern Loudoun, on the other hand, has had five of the eight districts for the past decade – Dulles, Broad Run, Potomac, Sugarland Run and Sterling.  Scott York, who served as chairman-at-large for the entire decade, also lives in Sterling.

After the 2010 Census, it again seemed possible that western Loudoun could lose a district.  Each district had to be equalized at a population of about 39,000.  Since this was roughly the population of Leesburg, one key question was whether to divide the town between two or more districts, or to keep most of the town together in the new Leesburg District.

Once a consensus emerged to keep most of Leesburg in one district, the Board voted to retain two western Loudoun Districts by extending Blue Ridge to the southeast, to include much of the Brambleton area, and by extending the Catoctin District around southern and eastern Leesburg, including a considerable number of residents with Leesburg addresses who live outside the town limits.

As a result, western Loudoun could still have two residents in the Catoctin and Blue Ridge District seats, with the potential for a third in the chairman-at-large.

The flip side, however, is the possibility that the county could wind up with zero members of the Board who live west of Route 15.

About 42% of residents of the newly redrawn Catoctin District live in the outer Leesburg precincts of Harper Park, Red Rock and Evergreen, all of which are east of Route 15. Harper Park and Evergreen are the Catoctin District’s two largest precincts, with over 6,000 residents each.

About 36% of residents of the Blue Ridge District live east of Route 15, in the Briar Woods, Pinebrook and Legacy precincts.  Briar Woods and Pinebrook are the two largest precincts in the Blue Ridge District.

Considering this population distribution, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario with a Blue Ridge representative who lives in Brambleton and a Catoctin representative from east of Leesburg.

Sometimes a victory is not what it seems at first.

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